Specks and Spots

First of all, you have to love the Rude Pundit. A friend of mine won't read him. "He's too fucking crazy," he claims. Well, perhaps, but the Rude One is always able to carry the argument or observation to a new angle of understanding, shining light where sometimes we don't like to look, but always where we need to look. Plus, he's so damned funny, like in yesterday's piece, The Jolly Rancher:

The Rude Pundit said it a couple of days ago, and he'll continue to say it: This is all just getting embarassing. Around the nation, the majority of Americans now cringe with gut-churning fear and shame whenever they hear George W. Bush speak. Indeed, localities are appealling to the federal government for emergency funds to deal with sewage overflows from all the vomit and diarrhea that an angst-ridden population is puking and shitting when Bush appears on the news.

In my judgment, Chimpie's speechifying just adds yet another unfunded mandate to communities across the country. What I thought was an irritable bowel syndrome, or perhaps the onset of Crohn's Disease just turns out to be a natural reaction to the sound of the worst president in the history of North America, or even the whole hemisphere. The Rude Pundit's diagnosis of my condition has saved me a lot of anxiety.

Meanwhile, the dipshits over at Human Events Online are getting touchy about the Operation Yellow Elephant campaign, and once again demonstrate a completely void understanding of rhetoric:

The Left assumes that people must be involved in an activity in order to express an opinion about it. If that were the case, not many people could express opinions about anything since they would be limited to their own fields. Only teachers could discuss education policy, only construction workers could discuss growth and zoning policy, only policemen could discuss drug policy, and only social workers could discuss Welfare policy.

Roger Custer, who fashioned this argument, tries, with all the logic of a Creationist (not that he is one) to make equivalence between totally disparate pairings. First of all, the Left hardly assumes that "people must be involved in an activity in order to express an opinion about it," because those on the Left are indeed talking about war without participating in it. So that cuts Custer's argument at its base. But let's go further. Say that Custer is right, and the rule becomes that you can't talk about something unless you are involved in it. Would that limit education discussion only to teachers? Of course not, since students, parents, administrators, potential employers, scholarship funders, and the members of the society whose lives are affected--everybody--in other words, is "involved" in education.

Besides, don't we often hear the argument that if you are really concerned about something, then perhaps you should take direct action to change it? Concerned about education, become a teacher or work on a school board. Worried about drugs in your town, get involved in a citizens group. So doesn't it follow that if you think war is a good thing, you should do something that directly benefits those fighting it beyond flapping your gums? And what could be a more sincere show of support than putting your body on the line?

You see, Custer claims that the Left is trying to shut him up, which is a flat lie. All that he's being asked to do is demonstrate his dedication to his point of view.

Oh, and Mr. Custer, I was a volunteer to our military in time of war--1971. Couldn't you return the favor as a true demonstration of your ferver? I mean, come on. "Fighting the battle of ideas?" Shit, man, that's chickenshit chickenhawk chatter. Imagine the credibility you'd have on those campuses if you shipped over to Iraq and greased a few Arabs. Then you could say, "Yeah, dudes! I was there, blowing those fuckers away left and right, and let me tell you, man...it's righteous!"

Fat fucking chance. Yellow Elephant pants-pissers. Keep talking Custer-boy. You're just proving the point of it always being the poor dying in the rich white man's war forever cheered on by the gutless cowards like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and their fellow wet-ass bitches.